The perfect headline

Tuesday, July 25, 2006

I'm a Corvette...

...or as the results page puts it:

"You're a classic - powerful, athletic, and competitive. You're all about winning the race and getting the job done. While you have a practical everyday side, you get wild when anyone pushes your pedal. You hate to lose, but you hardly ever do."

If I change the answer to the question I had trouble answering, I become a Lamborghini Murcielago.

The unserious vs the incompetent

Paul Mirengoff of Power Line summarizes the Democrat position on national security:

Let's look at where liberal Democrats stand on national security. They oppose military action against hostile nations like North Korea when they are in the process of developing nuclear weapons; they oppose systems that might defend us from nuclear weapons after these hostile nation develop them; they oppose any serious effort to secure our border from terrorist infiltration and would condition even a relatively unserious effort on the granting amnesty for millions of illegals; they oppose obtaining information from terrorists through interrogation techniques that stop short of inflicting physical pain; and they even have reservations about surveillance techniques that enable us to listen-in on terrorists.

If one didn't appreciate the knee-jerk nature of their opposition to defense and national security measures, one could easily conclude that liberal Democrats have a unified strategy for not defending the country.

That, along with their inability to separate themselves from the lunacy of the "netroots" movement, is why I wonder if the Dems will be unable to take advantage of huge Republican mistakes on such important issues as government spending and immigration. It's like watching two teams turn the ball over on every play.

Friday, July 21, 2006

Bolton on a ceasefire

UN Ambassador John Bolton answers the call for an Israel-Hezbollah ceasefire with his customary brilliance:

Well look, I think we could have a cessation of hostilities immediately if Hezbollah would stop terrorizing innocent civilians and give up the kidnapped Israeli soldiers. So that to the extent this crisis continues, the cause is Hezbollah. How you get a ceasefire between one entity, which is a government of a democratically elected state on the one hand, and another entity on the other which is a terrorist gang, no one has yet explained. The government of Israel, everybody says, has the right to exercise the right of self-defense, which even if there are criticisms of Israeli actions by some, they recognize the fundamental right to self-defense. That's a legitimate right. Are there any activities that Hezbollah engages in, militarily that are legitimate? I don't think so. All of its activities are terrorist and all of them are illegitimate, so I don't see the balance or the parallelism between the two sides and therefore I think it's a very fundamental question: how a terrorist group agrees to a ceasefire. You know in a democratically elected government, the theory is that the people ultimately can hold the government accountable when it does something and doesn't live up to it. How do you hold a terrorist group accountable? Who runs the terrorist group? Who makes the commitment that a terrorist group will abide by a ceasefire? What does a terrorist group think a ceasefire is? These are - you can use the words "cessation of hostilities" or "truce" or "ceasefire." Nobody has yet explained how a terrorist group and a democratic state come to a mutual ceasefire.

Thursday, July 13, 2006

More Selig stupidity

Okay, so we've passed the All Star break, including the infamous "only days of the year with no major sporting events" on Monday and Weednesday, so everybody's appetite is fully whetted to go out to the ballpark or turn on the TV and watch a game. So, in their infinite wisdom, MLB decides to schedule...16 of the 30 teams to have an off day. This is just mindnumbingly stupid, but unfortunately such idiocy has become the norm in the Bud Selig era. It's a wonder there are still any baseball fans left.

What our military is all about

Since the legacy media fixate on that inevitable tiny fraction of one percent of our military that are just bad apples, it's good to occasionally remind ourselves what the other 99.9%+ have been doing:

KARABILAH, Iraq - Thanks to the work of Marines and Iraqi Security Forces, 800 elementary-aged girls will now have a school to attend this fall.

Marines from 1st Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment unveiled a brand-new grade school in this city of about 30,000 on the Iraq-Syria border in western Al Anbar Province July 7.

About one week before its opening, insurgents planted an improvised explosive device inside the school which would have leveled a good portion of the building, destroying nearly three months of work by Marines and locals, said Gunnery Sgt. Joseph S. Mallicoat, team leader for the civil affairs team here.

“The bomb had the potential of taking down both wings of the building and the school would have been unable to open by September,” said Capt. Rick Bernier, commanding officer of C Company – the Marines responsible for providing security alongside Iraqis in this city.

The Marines discovered the bomb and immediately secured the building leaving Iraqi Security Forces to provide 24-hour security to prevent further attacks.

Local tribal leaders and sheikhs attended the school’s grand opening and expressed thanks to the Marines of 3rd Civil Affairs Group who spearheaded the reconstruction project and obtained the necessary manpower to complete the building.

Civil Affairs teams oversee funding for a variety of reconstruction projects in the region which bolster Iraqis’ quality of life while improving the economy, said Lt. Col. Larry L. White, the civil military operations center director for the Al Qa’im region.

The team spent nearly two years finding a contractor to complete the project and locals had lost hope of seeing their school constructed since it was destroyed in 2003 during heavy fighting between Marines and insurgents, according to Mallicoat, 33, from Vancouver, Wash.

“I want to thank the Coalition Forces on behalf of all of the people of Karabilah for finishing the school very fast and for supporting the construction of a fine place,” said Mohammed Ahmed Selah, mayor of Karabilah, where the school is located.

The mayor and the Marines agree that the school’s neighborhood is relatively safe although there is still the threat if IED’s – the insurgents preferred method of attack, according to Bernier, a Fallbrook, Calif. native.

“The bomb was a last ditch effort by insurgents to destroy the progress we’ve made in this area,” said Bernier.

Tuesday, July 11, 2006

The loony left civil war

An interesting article on the civil war among the "Netroots," essentially vicious attacks (as is their trademark, after all) on those who dare to hold Kos to account for his actions, is here. Republicans are obviously hoping that the Kossacks will gain or at least retain their influence with the Democrat Party, but they may not be able to count on as much bump as they might have hoped from regular voters becoming blog savvy and associating individual candidates with the kinds of (to put it mildly) extreme points of view that the Netroots espouse.

What to do with them

Antiwar types continue to work towards the release of the war criminals held in Gitmo and the like, but they never say what it is that should be done with them. Ralph Peters has an excellent suggestion, consistent with the Geneva and Hague Conventions and the rules of warfare, that will help keep the prison populations down:

Violent Islamist extremists must be killed on the battlefield. Only in the rarest cases should they be taken prisoner. Few have serious intelligence value. And, once captured, there's no way to dispose of them.

Consider today's norm: A terrorist in civilian clothes can explode an IED, killing and maiming American troops or innocent civilians, then demand humane treatment if captured - and the media will step in as his champion. A disguised insurgent can shoot his rockets, throw his grenades, empty his magazines, kill and wound our troops, then, out of ammo, raise his hands and demand three hots and a cot while he invents tales of abuse.

Isn't it time we gave our critics what they're asking for? Let's solve the "unjust" imprisonment problem, once and for all. No more Guantanamos! Every terrorist mission should be a suicide mission. With our help.

Friday, July 07, 2006

Every slice I eat, I get hungrier!

KALAMAZOO, Mich. — A topping presumably not offered at the pizzeria they had just visited landed two people in jail on marijuana possession charges.

Kalamazoo Department of Public Safety officers pulled over a sport utility vehicle that was playing loud music about 8 p.m. Friday. They learned there were several outstanding warrants against the driver, then found five sandwich bags full of suspected marijuana on top of one of three pizzas that had just been purchased.

Thursday, July 06, 2006

More proof of global warming

The Heat won the NBA title, and the Hurricanes won the Stanley Cup. If you thought that humans, even hearty stock like the Mavericks of Dallas or the Oilers of Edmonton, stood a chance against this menace, you need to get out and see al-Gore's movie immediately!

Saturday, July 01, 2006

You think he wants a do-over?

From CBS Minneapolis:

On March 30, Minnesota Timberwolves center Eddie Griffin was drunk and masturbating when he crashed his luxury SUV into a parked Suburban outside a store in Minneapolis, according to a lawsuit filed Thursday by the man whose Suburban was hit in the crash.

WCCO-TV obtained copies of 911 calls and store surveillance video of the incident, along with an accident report the police submitted to the state, reports WCCO-TV's Caroline Lowe.

Several of the 911 callers that night said Griffin was drunk. One witness said Griffin told him he was watching pornography in a DVD player mounted on the dashboard of his Cadillac Escalade SUV when he struck a Chevy Suburban parked on University Avenue Southeast.

Griffin is a versatile big who can play the 4 or the 5, but who knew he was a jack of all trades?

UPDATE 7/11/06: A guy on the Lakers newsgroup says that Griffin could be charged with vehicular mansplatter.